The Green Medium is an Emerald Award-winning, youth-run blog that seeks to innovate how we discuss and inform ourselves on environmental concerns.

Jul 4 This Term's Writer: Kaelin Koufogiannakis

Hello Green Medium readers! My name is Kaelin Koufogiannakis (Koo-fuh-gin-ah-kiss), and I’ll be the term writer for the next two weeks. I’m currently enjoying a summer of biking, frisbee-ing, farmers markets, playing accordion, and exploring the river valley, but in the fall I’ll be joyfully returning to the U of A as a second year student to continue my studies in Urban Planning.

Cities have always fascinated me, from my early days of walking down a sidewalk, wondering why dandelions grew up through the cracks, to being a student writing essays about the suburbanization of American metropolises. An incredible array of parts and systems must come together to make cities function; imagine if we didn’t have basic grid systems, sewers, property rights, traffic laws, public parks… At the heart of all of this is the fact that in order for cities to be built and work efficiently, we need to impact the environment in more ways than can be listicle-d here.

I was recently looking through the Green Medium archive and exploring all the neat topics that have been previously covered. It’s especially apparent from the diversity of articles that the environment is affected by every single aspect of human life. I’m excited to add to the conversation with a series of articles highlighting how cities play into this picture.

Meanwhile, here is a picture of me last summer on the Northwest tip of Newfoundland, with a huge iceberg. The experience came both with feelings of amazement and solemnity, at the thought that my children might never get the chance to see such a feat of nature if climate change continues as it does. I think if we want people to start acting on climate change, they have to be persuaded through the little moments like this one which demonstrate the real and relevant effects of our actions.